Australian leaders celebrate Julian Assange’s freedom but opposition says he is ‘no martyr’
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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gestures at supporters after arriving at Canberra Airport on June 26.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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SYDNEY – Mr Julian Assange spent his first night in 14 years as a free man back at home in Australia as the conservative opposition on June 27 cautioned the government against hailing the WikiLeaks founder as a hero.
Mr Assange landed in Australia to an ecstatic welcome on June 26 evening after pleading guilty to violating the US Espionage Act. He was freed by a US court on the remote Pacific island of Saipan, having served more than five years in a British high-security jail.
His wife Stella Assange said it was too soon to say what her husband would do next, and requested privacy for him.
“Julian plans to swim in the ocean every day. He plans to sleep in a real bed. He plans to taste real food, and he plans to enjoy his freedom,” she said on June 27.
Mr Assange’s supporters and free speech advocates view him as a victim because he exposed US wrongdoing and potential crimes, including in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, when WikiLeaks published thousands of classified military documents and diplomatic cables in 2010.
However, the US government has long said his actions were reckless, and by publishing the names of government sources, he had put agents’ lives at risk.
Mr Assange has not spoken publicly since being released. Overnight, a judge in the US state of Virginia formally dismissed all charges outstanding against him.
Australian lawmakers had called for Mr Assange’s release for several years, and his case was a rare point of tension in bilateral relations with the US.
“For some time now, the incarceration of Julian Assange was a thorn in the side of that relationship, it was just niggling away on the margins,” said independent lawmaker Andrew Wilkie, co-chair of a parliamentary committee that advocated for Mr Assange’s release. He added: “That has now been fixed, so I now see reason to be very optimistic about the bilateral relationship. That thorn has been pulled out.”
Mr Assange had holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London for seven years before going to jail. He had battled extradition to Sweden on sexual assault allegations, and to the US, where he faced 18 criminal charges tied to WikiLeaks’ release of the classified US documents.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who had called for Mr Assange’s release for years before taking office in 2022, welcomed him home in a phone call, saying they “had a very warm discussion”.
But the conservative opposition raised concerns about portraying Mr Assange as a hero after he spent over a decade trying to avoid prosecution and then pleaded guilty to one criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified national defence documents.
The opposition leader in the Senate, Mr Simon Birmingham, welcomed Mr Assange’s release but said the WikiLeaks founder was “no martyr” for the mass data leak.
“That wasn’t an act of journalism. It wasn’t like these were edited or curated documents. It was simply a data dump, a data dump from a leak and a data dump that came with consequences for the US in terms of how they managed their operations and their officials because of the safety risks that were created,” he told Reuters in an interview.
He cautioned Mr Albanese against meeting Mr Assange and said the celebration of his release was likely to lead to disquiet among some members of the US Congress. “I do suspect there are a few people in the Congress and elsewhere who would raise an eyebrow and think it inappropriate for Anthony Albanese to so publicly and personally welcome Julian Assange back to Australia.”
Foreign Minister Penny Wong told ABC Radio Mr Assange’s release posed no threat to Australia-US relations.
Mrs Stella Assange (left), wife of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and lawyer Jennifer Robinson hold a press conference at the Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on June 27.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The US State Department on June 26 said its involvement in the resolution of Mr Assange’s case was very limited and reiterated its position that his actions had put lives at risk, although the US judge who accepted his guilty plea said there had been no personal victim.
The White House was not in any way involved in the case, national security spokesman John Kirby said, adding it was a Department of Justice matter. REUTERS
